Why I went college instead of becoming a rock star.

Part 1 How to Rock it even if your voice hasn't changed yet:

I hate to brag, but I’m pretty much the greatest bass guitar player you have ever met. Now, I’m not saying I’m a fancy lass when it comes to playing the bass, I’m a solid, core structure kind of player. I decided long ago not to be “that guy” in the band who tries to wow the audience with his virtuosity on the bass. Great bassists are the opposite of the best children they should be heard but not seen.

I started playing bass when I was ten years old, which means I’ve been playing for twenty three years. Most bass guitar players are failed lead guitarists, and they play the bass like it’s a fat guitar. Not me, I’m the essence of subtle. I learned to play this way as a child playing the electric bass in a middle school concert band. While other kids were playing the clarinet and flute, (quick aside, if your boy comes to you and says he wants to play the clarinet or the flute, hit him with one), I was trying to convince my band director that if electricity had been invented in Bach’s time, he would have wanted an electric bass in his orchestras.

I think the only reason my band director relented and let me play such an unorthodox concert band instrument is because he had a goal of winning state with a high school Jazz band. He made the calculation that in six years, I might be a decent bass player and could anchor a pretty good Jazz band. For a band director in small town Montana, winning state with your Jazz band is pretty much on par with playing Carnegie Hall.

By the time I was in Junior High, I was getting pretty decent on the bass, and joined a three piece punk band called Vertigo. We were about as cool as you could get for a Junior High punk band, we started out practicing in the garage, and quickly began renting out the VFW and Elks club and producing our own shows. We hit pretty quickly on the fact that in Montana, there wasn’t a lot of entertainment options for the demographic now known as “Tweens”.

A typical show would work like this; we would find some Southern California punk band that was touring, convince them to stop in Billings on their way from Missoula to Minneapolis, rent out a club, market the concert, and be the opening band. This always worked great. We would charge $5 at the door, get 500 – 600 kids to attend, pay the club $1000, give the main band $500 and keep the rest. My take was $400 - $500 bucks a night. Over time, we became popular enough to pull in crowds without hiring a headlining band which increased our take.

With experience, our shows began to increase in both longevity, and entertainment value. We looked pretty professional with our home made signage. We had a king sized sheet with a tie died pattern that spiraled into a point in the middle of the sheet. At the very point of the spiral, we silk screened a silhouetted man falling into the spiral. Across the top was written “Vertigo”. The sing was soon followed by T-shirts, and stickers, pretty much anything we could think of to increase our branding and revenue streams.

We reinvested much of our profits on more elaborate shows. We began to rent lighting, and even started to rent smoke machines. It was pretty sweet to turn down the 16 gel lights, kick up the smoke machine, and start playing the opening bars of our original song Polaris (as in the north star, very, very heavy, man). By the time the band began to run out of steam, we were starting to construct our own pyrotechnics in the drummer’s garage.

During the two years I was in the punk band, I only had one groupie. I first noticed her at one of our early shows. She was a short, bull dog faced, Goth. She always sat right in front of me and stared at me for two hours. Sometimes the stage lights would reflect off her dog chain necklace and highlight her powdered porcelain colored skin, bringing to attention the veins she had drawn onto her neck with mascara. It was really creepy.

By the time I got into high school, the members of Vertigo were heading in different directions, the guitarist went on to be a music major I think, while the drummer went on to be a heroin addict. I saw him many years later in Billings, frail, pale, and on his way out. He was a diabetic, so he had to fear of needles.

Next up, the high school years, or how to keep your head when yokels are throwing underwear at you.